While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.The husband stitch --Inventory --Mothers --Especially heinous --Real women have bodies --Eight bites --The resident --Difficult at parties

    An FBI agent falls in love with a robot built for a suicide mission. A young woman unintentionally cheats on her husband when she is transformed, nightly, into a deer. Two strangers become lovers and find themselves somehow responsible for the resurrection of a dog. A woman tries to start her life anew after the loss of a child but cannot help riddling that new life with lies. Thirteen pregnant teenagers develop a strange relationship with the Founding Fathers of American history. A lonely woman’s fertility treatments become the stuff of science fiction.Magic intrudes. Technology betrays and disappoints. Infidelities lead us beyond the usual conflict. Our bodies change, reproduce, decay, and surprise. With her characteristic unguarded gaze and offbeat humor, Hunt has conjured stories that urge an understanding of youth and mortality, magnification and loss, and hold out the hope that we can know one another more deeply or at least stand side by side to observe the mystery of the world.

    Eli comes to town and shakes up Clara's perfect little life. He feeds off emotions, but hers are so much more than what he's ever felt before. And then all hell breaks loose when his kind, and his insane brother, find out. A rebellion brews, bonds form with witches and elves, ready to fight for their mates. DevourClara has it all. A wrestling star boyfriend, popular friends, all the right school activities...pretty much a perfect life...up until her parents died. Now she lives with the Pastor and his family and though they take good care of her, she feels alone. Then her boyfriend, Tate, starts to show signs of trouble when a new guy, Eli, comes to town. Clara is fascinated with him, but hides it until something happens. Eli confesses that she gives him something he's never had before...something he needs. He feeds off emotions, but hers are so much more than what he's ever felt before. Everything is about to change for this normal, pretty, popular girl in a supernatural way.ConsumeEli and Clara's story continues as she tries to finish high school. Eli is as over protective as ever and Tate and his group of friends are no help. They wait for the Horde, always looking over their shoulder. But the ever annoying but strangely prophetic bird begins to become more of a chatter box and Eli learns something that could change some things. Not just for him and Clara, but Devourers everywhere. Then an unexpectedness guest comes forcing Eli to flee with Clara, leaving her temporary family behind. She is thrown into his world of underground 'traitors' and learns much of his past. They meet many new people and creatures along the way to freedom. But when tragedy strikes the two, will Clara see the monster in Eli? Can she handle his strange world and awful past? Will one of them lose their life forever...AlteredEnoch is tested. His brother is human, the thing he hates. He watches as the brother he knew is stripped away by his love for Clara. He's never hated someone as much as he hated her...but the bond forced him to not only want to protect her, but feel things he never had before. When a girl needs his help, that split second decision changes his whole world in one instant. A Devourer's Fate...

    There is no writer more capable of picking out those seeds and exposing all their secret tastes and poisons than Oates herself―as brilliantly demonstrated in these six stories.The book opens with a woman, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, seated in front of the window in an apartment she cannot, on her own, afford. In this exquisitely tense narrative reimagining of Edward Hopper’s Eleven A.M., 1926, the reader enters the minds of both the woman and her married lover, each consumed by alternating thoughts of disgust and arousal, as he rushes, amorously, murderously, to her door. In “The Long-Legged Girl,” an aging, jealous wife crafts an unusual game of Russian roulette involving a pair of Wedgewood teacups, a strong Bengal brew, and a lethal concoction of medicine. Who will drink from the wrong cup, the wife or the dance student she believes to be her husband’s latest conquest? In “The Sign of the Beast,” when a former Sunday school teacher’s corpse turns up, the blighted adolescent she had by turns petted and ridiculed confesses to her murder―but is he really responsible? Another young outsider, Horace Phineas Love, Jr., is haunted by apparitions at the very edge of the spectrum of visibility after the death of his tortured father in “Night-Gaunts,” a fantastic ode to H.P. Lovecraft.Reveling in the uncanny and richly in conversation with other creative minds, Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense stands at the crossroads of sex, violence, and longing―and asks us to interrogate the intersection of these impulses within ourselves.The woman in the window --The long-legged girl --Sign of the beast --The experimental subject --Walking wounded --Night-gaunts

    16 modern fiction superstars shine a startling light on the romance and pain of the infamous literary pair Heathcliff and Cathy.Short stories to stir the heart and awaken vital conversation about love.Sixteen stories inspired by Wuthering Heights.In Terminus a young woman hides in an empty Brighton hotel; in Thicker Than Blood a man sits in a hot tub stalking his newly-married love on social media; and in A Bird Half-Eaten an amateur boxer prepares for a match.A woman recalls the Heathcliffs I Have Known and the physical danger she has borne at their hands; in Anima a child and a fox are unified in one startling moment of violence; and in One Letter Different two teenagers walk the moors and face up to their respective buried secrets.Curated by Kate Mosse and commissioned for Emily Brontë’s bicentenary year in 2018, these fresh, modern stories pulse with the raw beauty and pain of love and are as timely as they are illuminating.The full list of contributors is:Leila Aboulela, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Joanna Cannon, Alison Case, Juno Dawson, Louise Doughty, Sophie Hannah, Anna James, Erin Kelly, Dorothy Koomson, Grace McCleen, Lisa McInerney, Laurie Penny, Nikesh Shukla, Michael Stewart and Louisa Young.

    Justice Harbottle, The Room in the Dragon Volant, and Carmilla. The five stories are purported to be cases by Dr. Hesselius, a 'metaphysical' doctor, who is willing to consider the ghosts both as real and as hallucinatory obsessions. The reader's doubtful anxiety mimics that of the protagonist, and each story thus creates that atmosphere of mystery which is the supernatural experience. This new annotated edition includes an introduction, notes on the text, and explanatory notes.NB: The Familiar is a revision of The Watcher; Mr. Justice Harbottle is a revision of An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street.

    But mercs of all species know that if you head to southwest Houston, near the Starport, there’s a particular run-down strip mall that looks like it’s been abandoned for years. The glass door second from the south end of the strip is plastered over on the inside with blue paper, and the faint golden outline of a rampant lion is the only clue. The door is locked, of course, and beyond the door is nothing but a darkened hallway with a downward slope and a slight curve to it. Once you follow this curve far enough, you are greeted by two very large, very well-armed Lumar. “Welcome to the Lyon’s Den,” the larger of the two says without a translator, and without a trace of an alien accent. “You know the rules?” Welcome back to the Four Horsemen universe, where only a willingness to fight and die for money separates Humans from the majority of the other races. Edited by bestselling authors and universe creators Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy, “Tales from the Lyon’s Den” includes eighteen all-new stories in the Four Horsemen universe by a variety of bestselling authors—and some you may not have heard of…yet. Want to know what it’s like to do search and rescue while a battle is going on or what to do with that new manufactory you just won in a card game? Better learn the rules to the Lyon’s Den…and then step inside! Inside, you’ll find: Preface by Chris Kennedy “The Devil in the Pit” by Mark Wandrey “A Job to Do” by Quincy J. Allen “For the Honor of the Flag” by Doug Dandridge “Lucky” by James P. Chandler “Shit Day” by Marisa Wolf “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade” by Chris Kennedy “The Bottom Line” by Michael J. Allen “Midnight Diplomacy” by Tim C. Taylor “Desperta Ferro” by Eric S. Brown & N.X. Sharps “The Deadly Dutchman” by Kevin McLaughlin “The Felix” by RJ Ladon “The Heart of a Lion” by Terry Mixon “What Really Matters” by Chris Winder “Headspace and Timing” by Robert E. Hampson “Return to Sender” by Benjamin Tyler Smith “Grunwald” by David Alan Jones “The Quiet Was Fine” by Jake Bible “A Mother’s Favor” by Kacey Ezell

    WHAT are the dangers of getting directions from a fairy tale frog? WHERE do archangels go to kick back and relax? HOW can a garden gnome mend a broken heart? WHO is the last person you’d expect to visit you at Christmas? WHY shouldn’t you let Satan organise your funeral? Find out the answers to these and other pressing questions in this collection of short stories from the authors of the Clovenhoof series.

    A stunning gift edition collecting together Susan Hill's spinechilling stories of murder, magic and mayhem.'No one chills the blood like Susan Hill' Daily TelegraphFrom the horrifying secret of Eel Marsh House in The Woman in Black to the supernatural terror unleashed by spiteful Leonora van Vorst in Dolly and the deadly danger posed by Professor Parmitter's painting of Venice in The Man in the Picture, Susan Hill's ghost stories never fail to raise the hairs on the back of your neck and keep you turning the pages long past midnight.Here, collected together for the first time - and also including the bestselling Printers Devil Court and The Small Hand - are all of Susan Hill's spinechilling stories of murder, magic and mayhem.Read on if you dare.

    When a careless exploration leaves her trapped underground, she learns to live again in the absence of everything she once knew. Even driven by love and light, Sally Ann finds the deepest darkness within herself in When Darkness Loves Us.Beauty Is... - Old Martha Mannes has been a part of Morgan, Illinois since her birth. The whole town knows her as the dim-witted woman who was born without a nose, but Martha's mind wasn't always a blank slate. Unlocking the monster buried deep in her memories may bring back the sparkling child she once was... or it may send those around her crashing down into the nightmares of a little girl gone wrong.

    This early novel explores the cavernous landscapes and labyrinthine passages of Sicily's castles and convents to reveal the shameful secrets of its all-powerful aristocracy.

    Some stories are novellas and some are full length. ***All stories are part ones to other series*** As a courtesy, the authors inform you there are some stories with cliffhangers. These are the first books or prequels to individual series. Story 1 – Blair by Chrissy Peebles Story 2 – Enchanted Castle by Chrissy Peebles Story 3 – Victoria by W.J. May Story 4 – Courage Runs Red by W.J. May Story 5 – Betrothal – by Mande Matthews Story 6 – BSI – Bureau of Supernatural Investigation by C.J. Pinard Story 7 – The Light Keepers by Mande Matthews Story 8 – The Angel She Loved by Irene Kueh Story 9 – Dangerous Designs by Dale Mayer Story 10 – Untimely by J &L Wells Story 11 - Jin In Time Part One - by Karin De Havin Story 12 – Ageless Sea by M.R. Polish Story 13 – Eternal Vows by Chrissy Peebles

    Now the final nightmare must explode. Now the killing frenzy must begin...

    Immersed in the history, atmosphere and rumours of hauntings, they channelled their darker imaginings into a series of extraordinary new ghost stories.Sarah Perry's intense tale of possession at the Jacobean country house Audley End is a work of psychological terror, while Andrew Michael Hurley's story brings an unforgettably shocking slant to the history of Carlisle Castle. Within the walls of these historic buildings each author has found inspiration to deliver a new interpretation of the classic ghost story.Also includes two afterwords: Andrew Martin's Within These Walls: How the Abbeys and Houses of England Inspired the Ghost Story, and Katherine Davey's A Gazetteer of English Heritage Hauntings, properties which are said to be haunted, including the eight locations which inspired the stories in this book.

    She's loved one man for years and is about to give up on marrying for love entirely. When she receives a letter from a man in Texas looking for a bride, she considers marrying him to be close to her sister. She doesn't want to be alone for the rest of her life. Bernard agrees to work for Elizabeth after his life is shattered. As he slowly heals and picks up the pieces and gets to know his beautiful employer, he realizes he is falling for her more and more, but he knows his place in life. When she insists on taking a trip to Fort Worth to check out a potential groom, he knows he can't send her alone. Will he be able to survive the long train ride to Fort Worth without letting his feelings show? Or will Elizabeth somehow convince him that they are meant to be? USA Today Best Selling Author Callie Hutton Daniel’s Desire: In the Shadow of War Lt. Daniel McCoy escapes from a Union prison toward the end of the Civil War, his only thought to get far away from enemy territory. But he doesn’t count on saving young widow Rosemarie Wilson’s life. Rosemarie has no use for Rebels soldiers, having lost everything the last time they visited. But Daniel has not only saved her life, he is sticking around to help with the farm and her children until she recovers. With Union soldiers searching for him, every day that Daniel remains puts him in danger. Or is it the widow who has captured his heart the greater risk? Best-selling Author Caroline Clemmons Tabitha’s Journey Would you become a mail-order bride? Tabitha Masterson is certain whatever awaits her in Radford Crossing , Texas will be better than what awaits her in Boston. . She escapes to begin her new life in Texas, but trouble can’t be far behind. If she’s married when trouble arrives, surely she’ll be safe. But her fiancé is reluctant to accept her as a substitute for the mail-order bride he’d courted. Bear Baldwin is crushed when he receives a wire notifying him that the woman with whom he has corresponded for almost a year has passed him off to her friend. Do the two women believe he’s like an old shirt to be handed down? His mother urges him to give the substitute fiancée a chance, but his pride is stung and he hasn’t decided. Best-selling Author Sylvia McDaniel Scandalous Suffragette Brides: Abigail Women Wanted – Feisty, Head Strong Women Need Not Apply In New Hope, Texas women like children, are to be seen and not heard. Their only job in life is to marry, procreate and be a loyal, obedient wife. Thus the shortage of available women. Until, Abigail Vanderhooten is unexpectedly called home, her head filled with ideas of changing the world. Jack Turner likes being the mayor in a small, western town where the biggest rabble rousers are cowboys. Everything is about to change when Abigail, returns to town, ready to take on the local laws. While trying to keep the town from splitting apart, he’s surprised how her strong spirit captivates him. And he’s shocked when she manages to worm her way into his bachelor heart, with her controversial ideas. With a women’s revolution brewing, will Jack be forced to run her out of town, before he has a chance to convey how she’s changed him.